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Are video games the main cause of violence
Video games and violent behavior
Are video games the main cause of violence
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On April 20, 1999, in a small town of Littleton, Colorado, two high school students by the name of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris executed their plan to kill hundreds of their fellow students. With a multitude of guns, knives, and bombs, they walked down the halls of Columbine High School and started their massacre. In the end, twelve students, one teacher, and the murderers were dead with twenty one more injured. Klebold and Harris were both highly intelligent boys who came from a solid household. Both boys had also played sports and enjoyed working with computers. The motive for shooting at school is very unclear. One of the speculated motives was the influence of the highly violent video game Doom (Rosenburg). The video game Doom is about the main protagonist, DoomGuy, the toughest marine anyone has ever seen. After assaulting his commanding officer for trying to order him to open fire upon innocent civilians, he was sent to Mars as punishment. Meanwhile, evil has risen from the depths of the red planet. Being the only combat ready soldiers in a million miles, it is his and his squad mates duty to track down and kill a variety of evil creatures; such as murderous demon minotaurs, robot spiders, and meatball-looking demons. While DoomGuy was on look out, his squad has been viciously killed off by the many creatures of the red planet. Now it is up to DoomGuy to cleanse the planet from the evil with his only set back being that his squad mates took all of the guns and all DoomGuy has left is a pistol. Video games allow the players to experience the immense world the game has to offer. From a futuristic sci-fi shooter to a medieval action adventure, players are able to live out the adventures of the many heroes and villains and explore many different worlds within the broad setting any one game has to offer. Nevertheless, since the late 1900’s, video game industry has
Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, and Seung-Hui Cho all have a few things in common, they are all school shooters that have killed and injured a combined total of 149 human beings and are or were believed to be avid violent video game players, who also committed suicide immediately after carrying out their attacks. To the public, school shooters seem to share a direct connection to playing violent video games and that playing them leads to violent behavior. Violent videogames have become a highlight in the media and national debate for this very reason but, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a causative connection between participants of violent videogames manifesting violent behaviors. The media provides biased information that misleads citizens into believing that said link is well established and accepted. I argue that parents should make responsible and well informed decisions in regards to their child’s videogame activities in spite of the lack of scientific research.
Children today are exposed to more graphic violence in video games compared to any past generations. This is because the media finds that making a profit, surpasses the lives of the adolescents that play these games. However, over time two set of views formed from the violence in video games. James D. Sauer, is a graduate of the School of Phycology. In his article, “Violent Video Games: The Effects of Narrative Context and Reward Structure On In-Game and Postgame Aggression,” Sauer, describes that adolescents gain forms of aggression and violence after playing certain games. Not every video game causes post game aggression, but documented in his article, “Players who enacted in-game violence through a heroic character exhibited less postgame
“I feel like getting a baseball bat, breaking it over his head, and then STABBING him with the broken end!!!!” vents Eric Harris about his local weatherman on his web page (Anton 5). Harris, being one of the killers in the Columbine High School shooting, was called a “die-hard gamer who loved the interactive bloodbath called DOOM” (Anton 2). Doom was thought to be one of the factors in Eric Harris’ violent tragedy. The question is: did playing Doom lead to him being a violent child, or did being a violent child lead him to playing Doom?
The Columbine high school, located in Littleton, Colorado, never expected that two of their older students would turn against them and commit such a crime. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, were “social outcasts” and were fascinated by Goth culture and violent video games. The major question that has been spinning in everyone’s mind since that day is, “Did the video games and media influence them to kill, or did they have a mental illness; born as murders?”
Whether violent media content leads to real-life violence is always debatable. And in recent years, school shootings have made video games a new focus of public concern and scientific research. In public opinion, video games cause more aggression in comparison to traditional violent media contents because video games have more features of interactivity, "due to the active engagement and participation of players" (Hummer and Wang et al. 137). But more and more reports tell us that video games are not the main cause of school shooting issues; rather it is the negligence of parents, schools, and communities.
At this day in age we bask in the luxury of having easy access to advanced technology at our disposal. From the World Wide Web, to cell phones, music, movies and video games the human race has thought of any and everything to keep us entertained. Over the years studies have shown reasonable concerns regarding the long-term effects of video games. These games can desensitize gamers to real life violence, which is usually seen in the younger crowd. The studies especially hit on the games containing player-on-player violence. Though these games are extremely entertaining and can get kids to settle down for a while, if not properly supervised, they can produce adverse effects. Other studies have shown that video games can be used as way to yield positive outcomes such as, good problem solving skills, cooperation in a group and the ability to flow. Although there has been psychological research on children learning through the actions of others some believe that children are automatically able to distinguish between what is just a game and what is reality. The longer they are allowed on their game system the more they become convinced that their games are real. Some researchers believe violent video games can channel the aggression of the child but the parents are to blame for what happens to the child after playing an excessive amount over a period of time. Children can become preoccupied with these violent video games which have been proven to be the cause of poor social skills, uncontrollable aggression and a false reality.
In 1998, the US software industry sold $6.3 billion worth of video games (see Unknown). Not bad for an industry that didn't exist 25 years ago! Yet despite its continued growth, all is not well in the video game industry. School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Conyers, Georgia and many other towns have shocked the nation (see Malcolm). Understandably, grieving parents and sympathetic citizens are searching for a cause for this "outbreak" of youth violence. It is natural to assume, "when children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." (see Maker)
One of the most common criticisms of video games is that they encourage the violent tendencies among people. One of the most remembered incidents was on April 20, 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made one of the biggest shocking news stories by murdering 13 people and wounding 23 people before shooting themselves at Columbine High School. Various people think that because the boys “enjoyed playing Shoot-Em -Up video game “Doom” “which is a licensed game by the U.S. military to train soldiers to successfully kill” (Shin). Harris made a web site with his own edition of Doom, which he modified the game so there were two shooters just like “Doom”. Harris and Klebold created a videotape for a class assignment that was very similar to their version of Doom. In the video game Harris and Klebold created they were dressed in trench coats, carrying guns, and killed school athletes. The exactly the same as what they did in life at Columbine High School(Shin). People felt that the video game “Doom” influenced the Harris and Klebold on doing the Columbine shootings.
All sorts of action look like so thrilling and like just can do so in the violent video games. In fact, students cannot control curious by themselves, so most students will like to do an imitation of everyday life from violent video games. Close to campus violence and some students each fight before taking on violent video games, because they consider that it is cool and energized. Thus, they try to copy the violent video games some action and do it in the actual life,like 1999 USA "Columbine High School events”,
The shooters at Columbine high school, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold frequently played violent video games such as Doom, and Harris even created a modification for the game. The modification allowed two shooters to use a large arsenal weapons to shoot unarmed civilians (Anderson 353). Is seems eeril...
On February 14, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After this, President Donald Trump has made allegations towards the video game industry, blaming it as a main factor in the shooting. According to the website Quora, excluding mobile games, there has been over 15,000 games produced since 1985; “Many have been family-friendly, some sports, but the most in quantity and popularity are FPS or Action video games, that include violence such as killing people and committing other crimes.” (Pro Con) Although many people have been suspecting that the root of violence, such as school shootings, have been a result of video games, they actually benefit people in many ways.
With the development of technology, violent video games invaded every house, and now it played by every teenage in every family, whether on mobile phones, computers or gaming devices. Some people do not believe that those violent video games effect on the children, while others believe that the government should prevent the selling of these games. However, violent video games made a negative influence on everyone, on children brain like thinking skills, which made their behavior aggressive, on their physiological energy and feeling leading to segregation and violence between siblings in the same family, also on the parenting role of the parents, who are do not know anymore what they should do with their children.
Children start to act rebellious at home such as screaming, breaking objects, and even causing physical harm. However, when the minor encounters an argument with an individual they can physically harm or kill the individual. Such as, the massacre in high schools, the students that are bullied, plan to get back at the people by using violent actions. In other words the massacre shooting in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Littleton, Colorado, the high school students gained the knowledge of how to use a weapon to kill students. Since they have been harm by classmates, these students were furious which lead them to act violently towards their classmates by killing them. Like the article of “Did Video Games Train the School Shooters To Kill?: Determining Whether Wisconsin Courts Should Impose Negligence or Strict Liability in a Lawsuit Against the Video Game Manufactures” by Tara C. Campbell mentioned that a Marksman expert said the high school 's students have never fired a gun in their lives. He included, "pulled the trigger, instantly moved
“YOU SUCK!” “I killed him!” “Head shot!” These are just a few examples of dialogue spoken by children while they are playing violent video games. These video games might seem like harmless fun, but what if the violence in these games is affecting the behavior of young players interacting with others?
Throughout history many things in general have been improved upon. Four major improvement areas are: warfare, medicine, education of society, and technology. All of these improvements have brought with them positive effects. Warfare has allowed oppressed people to rule themselves; medicine has saved countless lives with vaccines and treatment programs; education of societies has allowed people to make their dreams come true; and, advancements in technology have made the previous three possible. With these positive effects also come negative effects, which are seen on a grand scale. Advancement in warfare has caused numerous deaths, medicine has advanced to the point where ethical questions arise because of cloning and stem cell research, the education of society in addition with the advancement in technology have allowed these negative advancements to be achieved.